


Corporeal Calligraphy

by frankenberger



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Bottom Will, But they also Switch, Established Relationship, I think my kink is showing, Lots of words, M/M, More Fun for Everyone, Murder Husbands, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Really Bad French, Rimming, Scar Worship, Top Hannibal, Words, murder husbands in paris
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 01:54:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6033709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frankenberger/pseuds/frankenberger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Will Graham has burned every word Hannibal Lecter ever wrote him, save for two - written indelibly in his flesh.</p><p>Hannibal and Will are alive, and they are free. Happily lost in the city of Paris. Hannibal is Will's dictionary (of the sleeping variety), and Will is the parchment upon which Hannibal writes his poetry.</p><p>Fluffity fluffity fluff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Corporeal Calligraphy

He used to write me letters, in another life. In his neat and careful copperplate, sketched in soft pencil that smudged at the brush of a thumb. Caged sentiments in more ways than one, reaching out to me from behind the glass walls of his cell, from behind the mask of pleasant, blank and mundane words that others would read and analyse. He wished a Merry Christmas, a Happy Birthday, but what these letters really said was 'think of me, think of me.' I never left a single letter unopened, but I burned every one. The drawings too, meticulous recreations of places and people that I could barely stand to look at.

I wonder sometimes if these letters were really as I remember. I wonder if every word was truly as heavy, laden with a longing for the reciprocation I couldn't provide. I wonder if the hunger truly lurked in the empty spaces between those platitudes. I could have been imagining it. Trapped in my own selfish hypocrisy, resenting him for wanting me but relishing the feeling of being wanted. 

My curiosity overwhelms me and I ask him, what did he really mean? 

But he only smiles, as if to ask whether it even matters. I know, he's right.

The pain of our past doesn't matter, not really. We are gone from that life.

I have burned every word he wrote me in the time before, save for two that will always remain. The first, inscribed on my body in a single stroke. Not with a pencil or the nib of a pen, but the keen point of a knife. The scar that curves across my abdomen speaks in eloquent poetry. I miss you, it says. I forgive you, it says. I love you.

The second scar is smaller, a brief punctuation mark on the skin of my forehead, the sharp bite of a skull saw. This is a darker word that resonates with hunger. I want you, it says. I need you.

Every other word that defined us in our lives before has been tossed into the fire, and together we have scattered the ashes into the open sea. The scars upon my body are the only reminders of an existence before we dragged ourselves from the waves, but I never resent these mnemonics or wish them away. I can only marvel at my own resilience, knowing that I would have never had this new life without my wounds. Over time, any negative associations fall away, with every brush of his hand across my belly, every kiss of worship he presses to my forehead. 

Hannibal cherishes every scar on my body, even those he did not leave with his own hand. I suppose I should consider this strange, but as I free-fall into the calm and ordered patterns of his mind, I understand there is no irrationality in this. He cups my cheek and softly scrapes the pad of his thumb over the still-dark and raised flesh of the jagged wound left by the Great Red Dragon, possessed with a kind of wonder. It is a gesture of praise for every painful event that brought us to this place, that brought me to his arms.

All that has happened has drawn us to one another, to this final freedom. And we are, at last, truly free.

With new names and histories, we walk the streets of Paris. I allow him to dress me in understated finery, well-tailored suits and shirts in soft, rich fabrics. I let him hold my hand as we stroll along the shaded avenues, kiss my temple and murmur soft prayers into my ear. He keeps his hair long, gathered in a messy knot at the back of his head. I clip my curls close, grow my beard.

We are no longer Will Graham and Hannibal Lecter, but rather something new and hopeful. We find mundane and undemanding jobs and create for ourselves a comfortable home. At night we drink wine and let the notes of the piano drift out over the rooftops of Paris. Between Egyptian cotton sheets we cleave to one another, write new stories on each other's skin. No weapons now as instruments, only lips and tongues and sometimes teeth.

In this honeymoon we do not hunt, but I know that we will. It'll be another activity we can share, like the Cordon Bleu short courses or the weekend spent fly-fishing for fat trout in the Dordogne. When the time is right we will revel in the kill once more. Until then he is simply happy to be with me, love me, breathe in and exhale me.

"You never wrote me another valentine," I say, gazing at the glimmering lights of the city below us. Paris in February is dismal, really, but at least the sky is clear tonight. "When you were in the hospital."

"In the hospital, no." He is watching me, eyes sparkling, as if the city lights are an inferior radiance. "Given your reaction to the first token I left, I had doubts that further gestures would be well-received."

I remember it with clarity, the visceral glory of the valentine he left me in Palermo. A blood-glazed tribute in flesh presented before the altar of the chapel. A masterpiece of intricate human origami that inspired both awe and the stirring of something dark inside my being. Did I seek Hannibal to stop him, or to fall prostrate and helpless at his feet? A chill runs through me, and I am enveloped in his arms. "Anthony Dimmond," he murmurs with roughened voice. "I could draw him for you, if you like. He reminded me of you."

" _Non. Vous m'avez maintenant,_ " I reply, distracting him with my clumsy French. "You have me, now."

He chuckles, " _Oui_ ," curls his arms around my waist, calls me his _beau garçon_. He growls quiet words of adoration in rapid, fluent Français as he nips at the lobe of my ear, presses the hard lines of his body flat against my back. Even the sweetest endearments can seem filthy and debauched when spoken in an unfamiliar tongue.

My knowledge of French is simple and purposeful. Composed of workmanlike phrases, bolstered by dim memories of childhood Cajun and supplemented with gestures when the words fail me. He considers this a challenge, and sometimes taunts me by only speaking French for days at a stretch. Instruction through immersion.

I am a good student, though. His voice curls up at the tail, signifying a question, and I answer. "Show me. _Montre-moi ton amour. Fais moi l'amour._ " I take his hand as he shivers against me, a thrill at the profanity of my request, and I lead him to the bedroom.

He remedies every missed Valentine with rapt dedication. I am his canvas, and he paints his love across my skin with his lips, with the kneading, squeezing pressure of his fingers. Face down, I push my upper body into the pillow as he composes pagan poetry with the tip of his tongue. Gripping the firm muscle of my backside, laving the secret, sacred parts of me with a wet and eager roughness. Exhaling hot breath and lustful moans. 

He twirls his tongue around my sensitive puckered rim, then ventures in with slippery, probing fingers. And I pant underneath him, waiting, wanting, as he lines up my hips and presses the slick, blunt head of his cock against my opening. I glance back toward him, feverish, and he shudders as he buries himself deep.

In my life before, I didn't know what it was like to be fucked. To be possessed so wholly, to be filled so completely. I never thought I would want this, but I crave the strangeness of this stretch, the building pleasure as he angles just right and his cock rubs against that perfect spot inside me. I never thought this would feel so good, but every deep thrust sets my nerves alight, and I moan beneath him as he sets a frantic rhythm. I am hard, so impossibly hard, but I won't touch myself. In my hand I would come almost instantly, and we're not done yet. So instead I writhe with overstimulation, clawing at the bed as he curls over my back and fucks me with frantic abandon.

Words flow from his tongue, a glossolaic symphony of transcendent praise and guttural obscenity as he seeks his release. I know this intensity, have felt this desperation. Hannibal is equally happy to give or receive, as long as the equation involves us both. So I know the feeling of being engulfed by him, the tight passage that pulses around my spit-slick cock as I push with long, slow strokes. To take, to be taken. To fuck, to be fucked. A word I never used in this context before, a word that never seemed apt until now, as I realise the pleasure of surrendering completely. I know my preference, and it is this.

He reaches around me to wrap his hand around my shaft, trailing his thumb across the throbbing head on the upstroke, precome easing the hard friction of velvet skin against skin. He is close to the edge, and his pace becomes rapid, rough. He wants to drag me with him into the abyss. A pressure builds, and I want it harder, faster. _Plus vite, plus fort_. But I choke around the words as the tingling rush courses through my body. The world coalesces into a single point.

Every muscle contracts, and then I fall apart. I clench around him as my cock twitches in his grasp, spilling wet warmth up onto my belly, down onto the bed beneath me. Hannibal comes with a low animal groan as my knees buckle, and we collapse together in a sated, sweaty pile upon the mattress.

In this moment, with slack muscles and eyes that won't focus, my mind is perfectly blank. I no longer remember my life before, I no longer remember my name. I only exist, and I am free. The outside world slowly creeps into my awareness, and it is his heartbeat against my back, the harsh music of his breath against my neck. 

We exist, we are free.

Hannibal slips sideways onto the bed, pulls on my shoulder until I flip on my back.

His eyes are shaded and sleepy, and his smile is beatific as he trails one hand down the side of my face, lingering on the dark raised tissue that mars my cheek. It lacks the poetry of his marks upon me, but he is a connoisseur of fine art, and finds it beautiful, as he finds me beautiful. " _Magnifique_ ," he breathes.

His hand roves down my chest, eager to trace the long pale line of the scar he left me, his exquisite corporeal calligraphy. His fingertips find the sticky smear of my release, and he smiles, lascivious, and he dips his head. Lapping at the sensitive skin, sighing with pleasure as he licks the scar tissue clean with the flat of his tongue.

It tickles, and I squirm. My hand clutches at his shoulder, strokes down his back. I find, by feel, the firm raised flesh of Mason Verger's brand. The first time I touched it, seemingly aeons ago, I felt him freeze against me with a gasp of shock. I know now that he was afraid for me, that the scar would remind me of dark things, that I would dwell on the pain of our experiences at Muskrat Farm. He was afraid that he would do the same, slip back into a mindset of regret.

But I find his scars beautiful, as I find him beautiful. With every brush of my hand against the brand upon his back, and with every tender kiss against the healing bullet scar upon his abdomen, the negative associations begin to fall away. He's stubborn, but he'll get there eventually, much as I did.

There are things that can be known, even without words. But after so many years with so many feelings unspoken, I cannot help but cherish every utterance. Here, in our new lives, with our new names, our new histories. As we lay together, legs wrapped around each other, wallowing in the drowsy afterglow.

"I love you." My statement.

" _En Français_!" His rebuke.

"Even though you're an asshole, I still love you."

He smiles, and I laugh, and together we fall asleep.

This is our freedom.

**Author's Note:**

> This was meant to be a Valentine's day story, but I keep giggling like a schoolgirl every time I try to write smut. I can only do it in sharp bursts.
> 
> In any case, happy day after day after Valentine's day to all the gorgeous Fannibals out there. You know who you are. *winkwink*
> 
> Oh, and I'm really unsure about the French in this. I could have left it out, but I'm pretentious, so... Meh. If I got anything wrong, please let me know. If translation would be handy, let me know.
> 
> Here is my usual disclaimer - it's 1:00am and I make lots of mistakes at 1:00am. Will reread and fix tomorrow, while bemoaning my terrible word choice.
> 
> And here is my usual plug - For [random pseudo-witty Twitter nonsense](https://twitter.com/Frankenberger), or for [sad textposting shitposting tumblr ramblings](http://frankenberger.tumblr.com/), come and find me.
> 
> Comments and kudos make me cry in the very best of ways. Feelin' the love. <3
> 
> Goodnight, from your friendly neighbourhood pretentious hannigram trashbag.


End file.
